Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell.com!ucsd!sdd.hp.com!spool2.mu.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: problems building abc
Message-ID: <5183@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 11 Jan 91 18:45:15 GMT
References: <1991Jan01.211524.18484@kithrup.COM> <1991Jan2.155305.10523@onion.pdx.com> <1991Jan4.025136.13039@NCoast.ORG>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 15

>BSD (Sun?) added it for NFS:  the semantics of unlink() are valid only for
>UNIX-like file systems, while remove() has semantics that are valid over a
>much wider set of filesystem types.

It sounds as if you're thinking of "rmdir()", which BSD added, but not
specifically for NFS, as NFS didn't exist (the idea of having network
file systems did, but NFS *in particular* didn't) when 4.2BSD was done. 

"unlink()", for plain files, is equivalent to "remove()"; it gets turned
into a "remove this file" request when sent to an NFS server by a SunOS
(or probably most other NFS) clients.

Neither 4.2BSD nor 4.3BSD nor 4.3-tahoe have "remove()" (yes, I checked
the source to 4.3-tahoe); 4.3-reno has it, as a wrapper around
"unlink()".  SunOS didn't have it prior to SunOS 4.1.